Books and Ideas

Easier Said Than Done Easier Said Than Done

Kwame Anthony Appiah's Cosmopolitanism explores the middle ground between the universal laws of liberalism and relativism's blind respect for all differences.

Jan 11, 2006 / Books & the Arts / John Gray

Harry Magdoff Harry Magdoff

The late socialist economist Harry Magdoff read Marx at fifteen and never looked back. A self-educated co-editor of the Monthly Review, he not only fought for a just and humane wor...

Jan 5, 2006 / Books & the Arts / The Nation

Of Queers and Kong Of Queers and Kong

From Brokeback Mountain's closeted cowboys to King Kong's embrace of Anne Darrow, Hollywood has queered cherished icons of masculinity. But the two films paint a bleak picture: Lov...

Jan 5, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Richard Goldstein

La Vie de Bohème La Vie de Bohème

Drawing from the New York counterculture in which he immersed himself, Ted Berrigan's sonnets and other poems sing beautifully about being broken and graceful and tough.

Jan 4, 2006 / Books & the Arts / John Palattella

Dr. Fun Dr. Fun

Kenneth Koch was one of the merrier in the bunch known as the New York School of poets. But he was more than just a poet of humor. He sought the essential nature of human existence...

Jan 4, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Melanie Rehak

How Do We Know FISA Is Working? How Do We Know FISA Is Working?

The illegality of the Bush-approved NSA domestic spying program seems obvious, especially with the passage of FISA in 1978, which requires electronic surveillance to be conducted o...

Jan 4, 2006 / Feature / Herman Schwartz

Out of Place Out of Place

Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, portraits of the Moroccan immigrants in Spain, gracefully evokes the unease of immigrants caught adrift between the stagnation of their old homes...

Dec 20, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Emily Lodish

Wartime Lies Wartime Lies

As Nazis dropped bombs in Warsaw, poet Czeslaw Milosz wrote a collection of literary criticism that sought to trace the rise of totalitarianism by deconstructing the mythologies of...

Dec 20, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Timothy Snyder

Europa, Europa Europa, Europa

Tony Judt's Postwar, a massive summary of European public life since World War II, is a triumph of narrative that will allow readers familiar with the history to experience it agai...

Dec 20, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Charles S. Maier

Rembrandt’s Year Rembrandt’s Year

2006 marks Rembrandt's 400th birthday, and an array of exhibitions, from the sublime to the silly, will open in Amsterdam, Washington and beyond. As the aesthetic hype escalate...

Dec 19, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Abigail R. Esman

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